climate, photos, miscellany
Exploiting the oil sands is like drinking seawater, when you are already dangerously dehydrated. It’s like starting up a smoky old kerosene lantern aboard a space station that is rapidly running out of air. It’s like giving more whiskey to the already-drunk guide who is paddling our canoe over Niagara Falls. And yet, huge expansion [...]
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In many situations – especially those that can be characterized as a ‘tragedy of the commons’ or ‘free rider’ problem – taking the ethics of the situation seriously often involves ignoring the game theoretical aspects and applying a maxim of moral reasoning like the categorical imperative. If each actor behaves in such a way that [...]
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This is an interesting anomaly: Some prominent voices at NASA are fed up with the agency’s activist stance toward climate change. The following letter asking the agency to move away from climate models and to limit its stance to what can be empirically proven, was sent by 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts. The letter [...]
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In The End of Nature, Middlebury College professor and 350.org founder Bill McKibben makes the case that humanity has put an end to nature by altering the climate, and then goes on to consider the implications. McKibben’s book – first published in 1989 – briefly explains why human activities are increasing the quantity of greenhouse [...]
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As with other high-risk activities, I think gambling on climate change is irresponsible and reckless, even if the people making that bet turn out to be right. If a person runs across a minefield in order to experience the thrill of danger, few people are likely to congratulate them for their bold choice in the [...]
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No matter what else we achieve, if the generations alive now fail to prevent catastrophic climate change we will be seen as failures by the generations that will suffer after us. We will be remembered as the people who had all the knowledge and technology required to preserve a habitable Earth, but who were too [...]
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Recently, I suggested that perhaps there is a division between ethical questions that are hard to answer and those where the answers are merely deeply inconvenient. Something a bit similar is probably true of climate change policies. There are a few things we should obviously do, but many large questions outstanding. Something clear: carbon pricing [...]
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There are two kinds of difficult ethical problems: situations where it is genuinely hard to work out what the right course of action is, and situations where the right course of action is fairly clear but people are unwilling to do it. Air travel is an example of the second type. I think it’s pretty [...]
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In terms of its actions, Canada continues to deeply misunderstand the nature, seriousness, and implications of climate change. What we know about the history of the climate and the nature of greenhouse gases strongly suggests that the continuing build-up of greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere is highly dangerous. Since burning fossil fuels is the [...]
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The other day, I saw a Vancouver Sun article called “Meteorologists split on global warming“. I was struck in particular by the sub-headline: “Fewer than one in five specialists in the U.S. see human influence as the only driver”. At first glance, may seem like a garden-variety example of climate change skepticism from experts in [...]
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Content copyright Milan Ilnyckyj (2003-2012). May be used non-commercially with attribution. For more details see this page.